Guest Blogger – Suzie Thornton
I couldn’t help it. Someone has to stand up to multinational corporations and who better than me? Well maybe many people who are smarter, more articulate and strategic. But I was a young, single woman, with no assets that anyone could threaten to take from me. I was working part-time in a bookstore. I was ready.
Or so I thought.
Helen Steel - the real heroine
No one suspected that the Oilspill court case would become the longest in British history. No one thought I would be denied legal aid and forced to defend myself against the most accomplished lawyer in British libel history.
It took a huge chunk of my life away from me, something I will never get back. But I had to do it. I simply wouldn’t be me if I had ignored or buckled to the threat. And I got to know Matt in a way that I doubt would have happened.
It’s funny but one of my friends who read The Accidental Activist claimed that it is a romance novel. Of course it isn’t. The Accidental Activist is a courtroom drama wherein a multinational corporation tries to crush a tribe in South America and anyone who tries to stop them, or highlight their injustices.
I studied Political Science at London University, but I never learned as much as I did taking on the big guys. You can never understand how the legal system helps the multinationals until you are on the inside. And then it simply gets frightening.
I’m glad that The Accidental Activist focuses on Matt. He was an unsung hero, a man who not only changed the outcome of our court case, but changed the face of political advocacy. I’m glad Alon Shalev was able to get inside of Matt’s head and show his transformation from a self-absorbed yuppie to a man who was ready to harness his talents to fight social justice.
The real website. It changed everything.
But the sex! Did you guys have to get so explicit about it? You know my mother will read the book, right?
This blog post is dedicated to Helen Steel – the real heroine in the real McDonald’ Libel case upon which The Accidental Activist is based.
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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist (now available on Kindle) and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/and on Twitter (#alonshalevsf).
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